Momentum behind fog computing, the Cisco-originated concept for edge computing in IoT networks, continues to build with release of what is claimed to be “the first truly open source, distributed fog computing stack for IoT,” and an upcoming fog computing conference boasting a list more than 40 speakers.
Cisco originated the idea back in 2012 and along with ARM, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Princeton University founded the Open Fog Consortium in November 2015 to promote and standardize the architecture. The consortium released its OpenFog architecture white paper, in February 2016 and has formed workgroups to address fog computing challenges in the communication, security, testbeds, manageability and software infrastructure.
iofabric: integration in the fog
In the latest developments Silicon Valley company iotracks announced at the IoTWorld Conference in Santa Clara the release of iofabric, saying it enables the integration of sensors, devices and data streams from any device on the edge or in the cloud.
“It is a distributed software service that can be installed on commodity hardware running Linux or directly on a cloud instance,” iotracks says. “Once installed, iofabric automatically creates an integrated mesh network of distributed instances, making it easy to centrally deploy and manage your entire IoT application – enabling IoT data streams to be processed individually or as a combination to create intelligent applications.”
iotracks press release quoted Lasse Andresen, founder and CTO at ForgeRock, saying: “iotracks provides a critical missing piece of the IoT Stack. It is hard enough to integrate and process sensor data on the edge, iotracks does not only that but is able to create and manage a distributed mesh of compute instances. This makes it easy to manage large business solutions that are geographically distributed and scale to scores of sensors and devices.”
He added: “iotracks’ use of standard containers and microservices make it seamless to connect with enterprise systems such as ForgeRock’s identity, security and privacy platform.”
Fog computing conference grows
In another fog computing development the organisers of the IoT Evolution Fog Computing, Analytics & Data Conference, to be held July 11-14 in Las Vegas. The CEO of the conference organizer, Carl Ford, said: “Our recent survey showed us that 90 percent of enterprises believe analytics is the key to success with IoT while only 40 percent of those surveyed feel they are effectively using their data. We have focused on adding Fog speakers that know how to gather information at the edge and to use analytics to assure success.”
